Mac Address Stand For

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By Joseph Moran Posted September 30, 2009
  1. Find Mac Address Windows 10
  2. What Does Mac Address Stand For In Computers
  3. Mac Address Stand For
  4. What Is Mac Address Stand For
  5. Mac Address Lookup
  6. What Does Mac Address Stand For In Computers
  7. What Is My Current Mac Address

When you think about networking, IP addresses are probably the first things that come to mind. But there’s another type of network address called a MAC address that actually forms the foundation upon which IP address communication is built, at least where local area networks are concerned.

A media access control address (MAC address) of a device is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC). For communications within a network segment, it is used as a network address for most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Looking for online definition of MAC or what MAC stands for? MAC is listed in the World's largest and most authoritative dictionary database of abbreviations and acronyms The Free Dictionary. Looking for the definition of MAC address? Find out what is the full meaning of MAC address on Abbreviations.com! 'Address' is one option - get in to view more @ The Web's largest and most authoritative acronyms and abbreviations resource. A MAC address is the unique identifier that is assigned by the manufacturer to a piece of network hardware (like a wireless card or an ethernet card). MAC stands for Media Access Control, and each identifier is intended to be unique to a particular device. A MAC address consists of six sets of two characters, each separated by a colon.

What Is a MAC Address?

A MAC address, sometimes referred to as a hardware address or physical address, is an ID code that’s assigned to a network adapter or any device with built-in networking capability (say, a printer). While an IP address can potentially be assigned to any device, a MAC address is “burned in” to a given device from the factory. A MAC address takes the form of six pairs of hexadecimal digits, usually separated by colons or dashes, and will look something like this—01:1F:33:69:BC:14. (Hexadecimal digits can only include the numbers 0-9 and letters A-F.)

The first three pairs of digits in the MAC address are called the OUI (Organizational Unique Identifier), which identifies the company that manufactured or sold the device. For example, a MAC address that begins with 00:1F:33 denotes a Netgear product. The last three pairs of digits are specific to the device and can be more or less considered a serial number of sorts. Together, the two parts of the MAC address form an ID that’s unique to a particular device.


To understand how MAC addresses are used, first consider that when you type www.smallbusinesscomputing.com into your Web browser, it can’t get there until a DNS (Domain Name Service) server looks up the corresponding IP address for the Web site allowing a connection to take place. While MAC addresses don’t have any real significance on the Internet, they’re used in a similar way on a local area network.

Given that IP addresses can’t be permanently assigned to a device—after all, a particular address can belong to one computer today and another one tomorrow— MAC addresses allow communication between devices on a local network by making it possible to reliably distinguish one computer from another. Just as DNS matches a Web site name to an IP address on the Internet, a technology called ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) matches an IP address to the corresponding MAC address of a specific device to which that IP address is currently assigned.

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What’s My MAC Address?

Mac

Finding the MAC address on a Windows PC is easy via the command-prompt utility called IPCONFIG. To run it in Windows Vista or Windows 7, click the Start button then type “cmd” (no quotes) into the search box and hit Enter. (In XP, click Start, then Run, then type “cmd” and hit Enter.) Then from the command prompt, type ipconfig /all and you’ll see the system’s MAC address listed next to “Physical Address.

Finding the MAC address on a Mac (no relation) is trickier and varies slightly by operating system version. Select System Preferences from the dock, then select Network, and depending on whether you’re using a wired or wireless connection, click on either Ethernet or AirPort. Finally look for either the “Ethernet ID” or “AirPort ID” (you may need to click an Advanced button to find them).

For other network devices like external adapters and other non-PC devices, the MAC address is generally displayed on a sticker at the back or bottom of the unit. In the case of network-enabled printers with built-in control panels (as most have these days), you can find the MAC address by visiting the unit’s Network menu or printing out a configuration page (check documentation re: how to do this).

MAC Address Tips

Since MAC addresses are used behind the scenes, you generally don’t need to pay a lot of attention to them, but here are three instances when being familiar with a device’s MAC address can be worthwhile.

Identifying Unknown Devices

You may recall from earlier that the first part of a MAC address -- the OUI -- indicates a device’s manufacturer or vendor. When you encounter a MAC address but don’t know the device it belongs to (for example, routers sometimes list the IP and MAC addresses for attached devices without providing any other information about them) identifying the OUI can help you identify the device (or at least narrow it down). Two good sites to look up a MAC address OUI are here and here. Remember, you only need to enter the first six digits of the MAC address to determine the OUI.

Find Mac Address Windows 10

DHCP Reservations

What Does Mac Address Stand For In Computers

DHCP reservations are handy when you want to automatically assign a consistent IP address to a device like a printer or NAS unit without having to visit the device to configure an address manually. Whether your DHCP server resides in a router, or a Windows 200x or other type of server, you’ll need to know a device’s MAC address to create a DHCP reservation for it.

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Wake on LAN

Wake-on-LAN offers a way to send a remote signal to revive a computer that’s in a power-saving mode (e.g. sleep/standby or hibernation) or even turned off. (Almost all systems built within the last several years support Wake-On-LAN, though you may need to turn the feature on in the system BIOS.) While a dormant computer can’t be contacted via IP address--technically, it doesn’t have one—you can reach it by MAC address. You can download a free Wake-on-LAN utility (for Windows) here.

Joe Moran spent six years as an editor and analyst with Ziff-Davis Publishing and several more as a freelance product reviewer. He's also worked in technology public relations and as a corporate IT manager, and he's currently principal of Neighborhood Techs, a technology service firm in Naples, Fla. He holds several industry certifications, including Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA).

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Mac Address Stand For

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Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a procedure for mapping a dynamic Internet Protocol address (IP address) to a permanent physical machine address in a local area network (LAN). The physical machine address is also known as a Media Access Control or MAC address.

The job of the ARP is essentially to translate 32-bit addresses to 48-bit addresses and vice-versa. This is necessary because in IP Version 4 (IPv4), the most common level of Internet Protocol (IP) in use today, an IP address is 32-bits long, but MAC addresses are 48-bits long.

ARP works between network layers 2 and 3 of the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model). The MAC address exists on layer 2 of the OSI model, the network layer, while the IP address exists on layer 3, the data link layer.

ARP can also be used for IP over other LAN technologies, such as token ring, fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) and IP over ATM.

In IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses, ARP has been replaced by the Neighbor Discovery protocol.

How ARP works

When a new computer joins a LAN, it is assigned a unique IP address to use for identification and communication. When an incoming packet destined for a host machine on a particular LAN arrives at a gateway, the gateway asks the ARP program to find a MAC address that matches the IP address. A table called the ARP cache maintains a record of each IP address and its corresponding MAC address.

What Is Mac Address Stand For

All operating systems in an IPv4 Ethernet network keep an ARP cache. Every time a host requests a MAC address in order to send a packet to another host in the LAN, it checks its ARP cache to see if the IP to MAC address translation already exists. If it does, then a new ARP request is unnecessary. If the translation does not already exist, then the request for network addresses is sent and ARP is performed.

ARP broadcasts a request packet to all the machines on the LAN and asks if any of the machines know they are using that particular IP address. When a machine recognizes the IP address as its own, it sends a reply so ARP can update the cache for future reference and proceed with the communication.

Host machines that don't know their own IP address can use the Reverse ARP (RARP) protocol for discovery.

An ARP cache size is limited and is periodically cleansed of all entries to free up space; in fact, addresses tend to stay in the cache for only a few minutes. Frequent updates allow other devices in the network to see when a physical host changes their requested IP address. In the cleaning process, unused entries are deleted as well as any unsuccessful attempts to communicate with computers that are not currently powered on.

Proxy ARP

Proxy ARP enables a network proxy to answer ARP queries for IP addresses that are outside the network. This allows packets to be successfully transferred from one subnetwork to another.

When an ARP inquiry packet is broadcast, the routing table is examined to find which device on the LAN can reach the destination fastest. This device, which is often a router, becomes a gateway for forwarding packets outside the network to their intended destinations.

Mac Address Lookup

ARP spoofing and ARP cache poisoning

What Does Mac Address Stand For In Computers

Any LAN that uses ARP must be wary of ARP spoofing, also referred to as ARP poison routing or ARP cache poisoning. ARP spoofing is a device attack in which a hacker broadcasts false ARP messages over a LAN in order to link an attacker's MAC address with the IP address of a legitimate computer or server within the network. Once a link has been established, the target computer can send frames meant for the original destination to the hacker's computer first as well as any data meant for the legitimate IP address.

What Is My Current Mac Address

ARP spoofing can have serious impacts on enterprises. When used in their simplest form, ARP spoofing attacks can steal sensitive information. However, the attacks can also go beyond this and facilitate other malicious attacks, including:

History and future of ARP

ARP was first proposed and discussed in Request for Comments (RFC) 826, published in November of 1982 by David C. Plummer. The problem of address resolution was immediately evident in the early days of the IP protocol suite, because Ethernet quickly became the preferred LAN technology and Ethernet cables required 48-bit addresses.

In IPv6, network nodes use a protocol called Neighbor Discovery (ND) to acquire configuration information. Neighbor Discovery operates in the Link Layer (Layer 2) of the OSI model and uses Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) version 6 to discover neighboring nodes.